The present invention relates to a system and method for the conditional trading of arbitrary items over one or more electronic networks. More specifically, the present invention relates, in a preferred embodiment, to a method and system for contingency trading of securities such as convertible bond “swaps”, risk arbitrage, and pairs in both listed and over-the-counter markets.
There are five types of industry participants generally involved in convertible securities: 1) mutual funds which make decisions to purchase and sell convertibles based upon a) fundamental research relating to the company or the industry, and b) asset allocation and portfolio adjustment decisions; 2) hedge funds which are driven to purchase and sell securities based upon the relative value of the convertible to its underlying stock and other convertibles; 3) large multinational broker-dealers which purchase and sell securities based upon customers' (mutual funds and hedge funds) purchase and sale interest as well as relative value; 4) regional broker-dealers which are driven to purchase and sell securities based upon customers' interest and retail distribution power; and 5) broker's brokers which expose indications of interest between dealers and some hedge funds, who act only as agent and do not position securities. There is no computer network actively linking these participants in a transaction-oriented format. Virtually every transaction is through verbal private negotiations. Almost every bid, offer, or trade is made verbally and is transmitted only to those persons involved in the trade. The present invention will create an auction market instead of a negotiated market and will display prices to all participants and save the information for later use. The present invention is an anonymous system; the current verbal network is neither efficient nor anonymous.
Over the past 15 years electronic order display networks have proliferated in the equity markets. From Nasdaq's ACES system to the very successful Instinet system, the industry has been transformed from a marketplace in which negotiations take place over the phone between two parties to one in which negotiations take place over a computer network among several parties. This phenomena has created a quasi-negotiated/ quasi-auction market in both Nasdaq securities which have, until recently, been primarily negotiation-based and listed securities which have been primarily auction-based. In effect, these networks have provided users with the ability to choose the method of negotiation most befitting their current situation and objectives. Convertible securities markets have not been exploited by these systems to the extent the equity markets have, in part because of the complex nature of “typical” trading practice. Specifically, a large portion of convertible securities presently held in positions are hedged in one form or another and well over 60% of the trading volume is effected with a “contingent” transaction (a transaction in which another security is traded at about the same time). The present invention has developed the framework for a system that satisfies a need in the art, which will exploit this market, and other contingency based markets like risk arbitrage, ADR's, pairs, and eventually, options.